Chapter 487 - 310: Who Can Tell a Campus From a Theme Park?

Chapter 487: Chapter 310: Who Can Tell a Campus From a Theme Park?

Many wealthy clients, especially the super-rich, have rather unique architectural tastes.

The designer of Deepwater City University was well aware of this.

As an experienced designer who had created numerous famous buildings, he had accepted many strange commissions throughout his career.

Crooked castles, upside-down houses, a manor that looked half-collapsed, an eight-hundred-square-meter luxury cat-themed villa for a client’s Cat and the Cat’s servants...

The client, well, as long as they paid handsomely, even strange requests were acceptable.

But Zog’s requests were still a bit too strange.

It wasn’t that his aesthetic requirements were strange—the exterior of Deepwater City University was just an ordinary ancient castle, a common design for many academies on the Continent.

The strangeness of Deepwater City University was in its functionality.

Or rather, its peculiarity.

Take Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, for example.

The platform’s sign hung on the third pillar between Platform Nine and Platform Ten.

However, the entire wall between the two platforms served as an entrance.

The wall was an Illusion Technique, with no physical form. Passing through the illusory wall revealed the train.

There was no helping it. If the entrance was really only as wide as a single pillar, efficiency would be a lost cause.

Between perfect replication and practicality, Zog chose a compromise.

The entire station was actually a transfer hub where Deepwater City’s Metro Line 1, Line 8, and the academy’s exclusive line converged.

Platform Nine and Three-Quarters was the entrance to transfer to the academy’s exclusive line.

From a design perspective, building an entrance hidden by an Illusion Technique served no purpose other than making it hard to find.

The designer certainly had no sentimental feelings for Harry Potter.

As for the one who *did* have sentimental feelings, he was currently striking a pose, getting ready to... sprint!

He passed through the illusion and opened his eyes.

A bright red Steam Engine was waiting at the platform, ready for departure. A prominent sign on the front read "Hogwarts Express."

This particular Hogwarts Express wouldn’t be like its prototype, which only ran a few days a year. This one was quite busy.

You couldn’t just lock the students in the school for an entire semester and only let them out once.

Seeing the scene, which was almost identical to the one from the movie he remembered, Zog was extremely satisfied.

He ran back and forth through the illusory wall.

"I’m in! Now I’m out! Woohoo!"

The headmaster and the designer exchanged a glance.

"Is Mr. Zhuoge... always like this?"

"I, uh, I’m not sure. I haven’t known him for very long either."

"I can’t help but feel he’s a little..." The designer trailed off.

"Childlike! He’s a bit childlike. He always maintains a heart full of innocence, which is why he can consistently design toys that children love."

"Right, right, that’s what I meant too..."

Afterwards, the designer led Zog and the headmaster to inspect the other facilities on campus.

Especially the ones Zog had specifically requested.

Among them were some the designer found quite useful, such as the Illusion Technique applied to the cafeteria ceiling, which could simulate various skyscapes.

’What a great idea. How has no one thought of this before? It’s not even difficult to implement.’

The most common methods for ceiling decoration were basically just murals and sculptures.

They took a long time to create, and no matter how good they looked, you’d eventually get tired of seeing them.

Not like this illusory ceiling, where you could adjust it to whatever you wanted to see.

’I’ve learned something new.’

And then there was a commercial street called Diagon Alley.

’What kind of idea is it to build a bunch of shops inside a school?’

Most schools, in order to maintain the so-called "purity" of academia and knowledge, were strongly against having shops on campus.

In reality, this only created an inconvenience, forcing students to go off-campus to buy things.

It would be much better if they could buy all their daily and academic necessities right at school.

Currently, the shops in Diagon Alley were all vacant. Aside from a few fixed locations that Zog had already designated for specific goods, the rest were available for rent.

The designer pondered whether he should take this opportunity to secure a shop for himself. He could sell anything.

’If this school actually succeeds, a shop in Diagon Alley would be a gold mine.’

However, there was one thing about this unique commercial street that he didn’t quite understand.

Zog had designated a large, prime-location building to be a hotel.

Why would a school need a hotel?

The designer simply could not comprehend it.

But those two were the only things the designer found remotely useful.

The rest were pretty much useless.

Staircases that changed direction on their own—new students would have to spend weeks just memorizing the routes.

Portraits with rudimentary intelligence that could chat with people, which would often make the hallways unbearably noisy. Zog had wanted them to have normal intelligence, but sadly, that wasn’t possible, so he had to settle for the next best thing.

The club activity room, also known as the "Room of Requirement." After a club successfully applied for the room, they would receive a Scroll. Activating it would generate a door-shaped Teleportation Array on the nearest wall. However, activation required intense concentration—*very* intense, on par with learning a new Magic spell. So it was quite possible to be granted the room but be unable to open it.

The most outrageous of all, Zog demanded that some Undead float around the school.

Who in their right mind, when building a proper school, would have Undead floating through the academic buildings? Weren’t people afraid?

And all sorts of other strange and bizarre facilities.

When the designer first received the client’s requirements, he was completely baffled. It didn’t look like he was building a school at all; it was more like he was building a playground.

After Zog came for the inspection today, the designer was even more certain of his initial judgment.

It really was just built for fun.

Zog was hopping up and down the moving staircases. ’He’s a flying Dragon, for crying out loud. What’s the point of running up and down the stairs?’